This is a no nonsense scoreboard. A sheet of metal packing material, a couple of star pickets, some wire and hooks.

The Darkan Football Club was formed in 1912 and played in the Wagin Districts Football Association. In more modern times the team playing at Darkan Oval was the West Arthur Football Club – a foundation member of the Upper Great Southern Football League in 1959. West Arthur lasted until 2004 when it merged with Wagin.

There’s been a bit of a Darkan revival in recent years with the town’s most famous product Paul Duffield coaching Wagin and that team playing a couple of games each season at his old home town. Duffield played 171 games for Fremantle from 2003 to 2015 and was a strong performer in finals back in days the Dockers chose to participate in September action.

West Arthur’s last premiership was in 1976. If ever you need to know anything about it just contact Mark Duffield, chief football writer at The West Australian. He’ll tell you the West Arthur line-up… in their starting positions and let you know how they each went on grand final day – they were all brilliant but in different ways.

You may have heard of (or even heard at the time!) the so-called synthetic radio broadcasts of Test matches in the 1930s, when commentators in Sydney – namely Alan McGilvray – broadcast Ashes Test matches in England via printed telex messages from the other side of the world, plus sound effects. (And we think Twitter and podcasts are something new.)

What I didn’t realise until watching the new SBS documentary series Australia In Colour was that the radio studio had its very own scoreboard! Of course. Makes perfect sense.

You can also watch, in authentic black and white, this very short YouTube clip which has, at the seven-second mark, a glimpse of The Reg Marshall Magnetic Cricket Scoreboard, used in England to keep English cricket fans up to date with games in Australia. Look out for the phrase ‘Cricketers Bowl One Over In The King’s Head.’

Who’s batting? Who’s bowling? Who cares? Does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

While the Western Australian chapter of Scoreboard Pressure continues its epic odyssey in search of desolate scoreboards in the desert (imagine Harry Dean Stanton in the film Paris, Texas), the Victorian branch this week offers a leafy alternative.

Head-down despondency for the dismissed batsman. Head-up hope for the incoming team-mate.

Parallel Universe
Holden Caulfield Park is a gathering place for devotees of the late American author, the reclusive J.D Salinger. Holden Caulfied was the teenage anti-hero of the early 1950s novel The Catcher In The Rye. Cricketers at this ground discuss Salinger’s legacy at training, during drinks breaks of matches, in-between innings, at AGMs. Many a Thursday night selection committee meeting has lingered long into the evening as discussion turns to Holden and his health and those days wandering the streets of New York. The club hosts readings of extracts not just from The Catcher In The Rye but from Franny And Zooey; Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour: An Introduction; and For Esme, With Love And Squalor.

Members of the Holden Caulfield Cricket Club enjoy regular literary soirees.

Thanks once again to Michael Turner, for this expert detective work in tracking down, via YouTube and the National Film & Sound Archives, glimpses of the TCA scoreboard (built in 1907) in a 1911 gameof footy between Cananore and North Launceston.

In the brief footage you’ll see a close-up of part of the scoreboard at 2 minutes 10 seconds. Thereafter, for the next minute and 10 seconds it is in the distance. In the first minute or so of the footage you’ll see plenty of hats and grandstands!

The National Film & Sound Archive states: These film fragments represent the earliest known surviving moving images of Tasmanian Australian Rules football action, filmed in 1911.

Found an old March 1976 copy of Australian Cricket the other day, which included the attached – taken at the TCA Ground during the West Indies tour in January 1976.

Thanks Michael. What a treat!

A City Of Hobart website states: The TCA Ground playing area is nearing completion of extensive works to improve the playing surface, drainage and irrigation. A new scoreboard is also set to be installed shortly.

Ric Finlay, writing for ESPNCricInfo some time ago, states: The press, originally accommodated under the old scoreboard (which was built in 1907), were relocated on the top deck of the stand in 1977, the year of Tasmania’s admission to the Sheffield Shield.

A brief history of the ground by Austadiums does not refer to the scoreboard but AC/DC, greyhound racing, World Series cricket and the 1978/79 Gillette Cup all get a mention.

The scoreboard at Football Park in West Lakes, South Australia was never the most imaginative of scoreboards. Functional, yes. Attractive? Well, that depends on what you’re looking for – aesthetics, design, geometry, history or just the score.

And when Adelaide played Richmond in Round 16 1993 you would have got a very stiff neck looking up at the scoreboard every time the home team kicked a goal. The Crows kicked 26 goals, with Tony Modra bagging an impressive 13 of them. Yes, 13. (And four points.)

Artist Mike Hugo captured a sense of the occasion in his Clubland series of artworks. “I was using a different style to my previous work, and trying to integrate a twist to each design. In the case of the Footy Park scoreboard, one of the signs reads ‘Classic Modra’ but is done in the style of the SA famous chicken salt brand Mitani.”

“The design was quite difficult to do because I couldn’t find many decent reference shots from the time period. The final design actually uses an angle from a later time, but I was able to get an okay reference shot from around ’93 to make sure all the signage was correct. Although the Footy Park scoreboard didn’t change much over the years, there were always minor tweaks to the signage and structure around it.”

Artwork by Mike Hugo

“In creating the design I probably learnt a bit too much about the scoreboard… I ended up having to recreate each LED so I could then create the text on the scoreboard. ”

Artwork by Muke Hugo

Adelaide Crows supporter Mark ‘Swish’ Schwerdt was at the game. “Last year’s podcast The Greatest Season That Was: 1993 reminded the footy following world of the exploits of Tony Modra. Although the Crows famously choked in the second half of the Prelim Final that year, there were many highlights for Adelaide fans. The highest of those lights was their Round 16 thrashing of Richmond. ”

Swish (right) in commemorative T-shirt, accompanied by fence bulder and film-maker Jesse (eldest son of the Victorian chapter of Scoreboard Pressure).

“Whenever I don my shirt, I am reminded of that fun-filled Friday night, a night where Adelaide went virtually unopposed and their fans roared with laughter as each and every lucky bounce went their way. I am also reminded that Richmond reversed the result in 1994’s corresponding fixture…Just don’t mention the 2017 Grand Final.”

Mike Hugo has, for the time being, retired his various football-themed artworks and products. He’s on Twitter: @FootyPlaces As is Swish: @swishtter

I visited Grass Patch late in December 2010. I’m guessing this structure is what’s left of the scoreboard.

There’s no longer a team at Grass Patch but plenty of footy has been played in the little town 80km north of Esperance. In the 1920s Grass Patch was part of the Mallee Football Association with Dowak, Scaddan and Salmon Gums. At other times GP competed in the Esperance Football Association – in the early 1960s as part of a team called Mallee that was a combination of Grass Patch and Salmon Gums.

The Mallee games were always well reported.

“The hard training and unflagging persistency of our local football club have at last secured a well merited reward. After an unbroken series of defeats a well deserved win fell to their lot on the 19th inst. (sic) when, meeting Scaddan at the Grass Patch football oval, they defeated their opponents handsomely by 36 points to 28 points after a ding-dong battle, packed with thrills and exhibiting some of the finest points of the game.” (Kalgoorlie Miner 27 July 1925).

The siren has gone and the scoreboard attendants take a moment to rejoice in a rare 2018 victory for the Sharks.

For many years the two Fremantle teams were co-tenants at Fremantle Oval. East Fremantle, then known as Old East, moved permanently to their new home in 1953.

It’s late in a derby at East Fremantle Oval, the home of the Sharks, in 2004. South Fremantle, the bitter enemy, are about to go forward, scores are level. And the winning raffle ticket number is clearly displayed. Do you ever wonder how often the raffle prize is actually picked up?

There was, however, an earlier move. Old East made East Fremantle their home in 1906. But, as Dolph Hendrich pointed out in The Jubilee Book of the East Fremantle Football Club (1947) the move was not a success. “… for the ground was rather exposed to the winter gales, on the small side, and rather primitive in the matter of comfort for the players. The public found the locality rather out of the way… and the following year saw the Club back again at the scene of many former triumphs – the Fremantle Oval.”

East Fremantle Oval is no longer small but the wind sure does blow strong.

Fans of the Sharks are always keen to remind you they’ve won more WAFL premierships than any other club, they’ve produced a trio of Brownlow Medal winners (Simon Black, Shane Woewodin, Ben Cousins) and have more players on AFL lists than anyone. It’s all true but you’re not obliged to listen to them. East Fremantle won a premiership in every decade until the 1990s. Recent years have not been so successful.

Closely at this photo provided by East Fremantle fan Dave Warner and you’ll make out the scoreboard on a miserable day in the early 1990s and a hardy lone fan sitting in the open

The Dockers first took the field in 1995 at East Fremantle Oval in a scratch match against the Bombers.

From midway through the 1945 season to early in 1947 East Fremantle won 35 games in a row. The team’s undefeated season under coach Jerry Dolan in 1946 was finally matched by Subiaco in 2018.

Job done and the numbers come down.

Among all the great players George Doig stands tallest, though for a full forward he was quite short. Doig was the first player to score 100 goals in a WAFL season. He kicked 106 in his first season for East Fremantle in 1933 and more than 100 in each of his first seven seasons. In all he scored 1,111 goals.

It’s the ultimate put-down for an annoying opponent – when you’re in front and there’s no way they’re coming back. And it’s always accompanied by a finger pointing at the scoreboard and the story it tells.

Can’t say I’ve seen it that much in recent years. But it happened twice in the round two AFLW match between Fremantle and Brisbane. Captain Kara Donnellan reminded an in-your-face last quarter goal scorer of the futility of her efforts and Ashley Sharp (pictured) suggested a niggling visitor should take note of the Fremantle Oval scoreboard.

We welcome all efforts to give scoreboards the attention they deserve.